Willy Brandt

Willy Brandt (18 December 1913-8 October 1992) was Chancellor of West Germany from 22 October 1969 to 7 May 1974, succeeding Kurt Georg Kiesinger and preceding Helmut Schmidt. Brandt was the first SPD chancellor since 1930, and his tenure saw him attempts to reach out to both the communist states of Eastern Europe with his Ostpolitik policy and support for the United States' foreign policy, leading to criticism from both the right and left.

Biography
Ernst Karl Frahm was born in Lubeck, German Empire on 18 December 1913, and he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1930. He fled to Norway during Nazi rule and became a journalist, publishing under the name "Willy Brandt". He acquired Norwegian citizenship in 1938, but he escaped to Sweden following the German invasion of Norway in 1940. He returned to Germany in 1945, rejoined the SPD in 1947, and reacquired German citizenship in 1948. He was a member of the Berlin city parliament from 1950 to 1966 and of the West German Parliament from 1949 to 1957 and from 1969, and he served as Lord Mayor of Berlin from 1957 to 1966. He proved an inspiration to Berliners when the Berlin Wall was built, and he sought to change German internal relations to relieve the suffering of those who were suffering from German division. He became Foreign Secretary in 1966 and won the Chancellorship in 1969 after leading his party to its first election victory since 1945, and his term in office was marked by a radically new approach to the German question. He recognized and co-operated with the Eastern European states of the Soviet Union, Poland, and East Germany, and his policies introduced a new phase of the Cold War globally. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in 1971. However, he was forced to resign as Chancellor in 1974 after his secretary was uncovered as a Stasi spy, but he remained SPD chairman until 1987. From 1977 to 1989, he chaired the North-South Commission, which produced a series of reports that sought to redress the inequalities of prosperity between the wealthy countries of the northern and the poorer countries of the southern hemisphere. Brandt died in Unkel, Germany on 8 October 1992 at the age of 78.